virtualbox.org

I am not new to using images but I am new to Administrating them. There was always an IT guy at work for me to tell them I had a problem. Now I'm the IT guy looking for some help. . I have installed VirtualBox v 5.0.2 on my Windows 7 laptop. After a lot of trial and error I was finally able to get one of the centos 7 iso files to work. The only one I was able to get to bootup was the LiveCD image. I had problems with all the others. Now that I have the image running I made changes to the OS such as removed NetworkManager with the yum command and added an ifcfg-enp0s3 files with parameters and life seems to be good. I am using Bridged Adapter with my Dual Band Wireless connection. I was thrilled when I could ping the Centos VM from my Windows Host and vice versa from Centos image to my Windows. I took a snapshot of the machine (Thank goodness, and I highly recommend it) as when I powered the image down and then powered it up again to my surprise NetworkManager was running and my ifcfg-enp0s3 file was gone and all the changes I made were gone. I am not sure what I am missing from the Administration of the image that I have to constantly refer to my snapshot. Maybe that is the way it is and I don't know it but from what I am reading it appears Idon't have something setup right. Maybe it is the way I am using the image.

Thank you for the help.

We support VirtualBox and from what I can tell from your description, your issue is with the guest OS which we do not support.
I think you need to address this issue with the forums of the guest OS unless you can prove this is in fact a VirtualBox issue.

One other thing. If in fact you are only working with a LiveCD and have not installed it then the guest will never be saved with changes. Once rebooted or shut down the guest starts over clean.

Perryg wrote:One other thing. If in fact you are only working with a LiveCD and have not installed it then the guest will never be saved with changes. Once rebooted or shut down the guest starts over clean.

Hello Perryg. Thank you for the comment above. I think this is the problem. I could not get the "everything" iso or the LiveDVD iso to boot. They all had read problems when they went to start. I know it is me and my lack of understanding how they work. I will try again. I wanted to use the everything iso. I am saving them all to a external hard drive where I am running the images from. I just couldn't find a good step by step for the Centos 7 install on the newer version of VirtualBox.

I am still not sure what or how you are doing all of this from what you posted, but if you do not actual install the guest it will never be saved after a reboot. As for a tutorial they are none specific to any version of VirtualBox. The install is exactly the same.

Another thing, if a live-CD is still in the virtual CD drive when you reboot the guest, you will go back into the live-CD environment, even if you did set to install the OS to the virtual hard drive. Virtualbox will look to the virtual CD drive, see a bootable CD there, and boot from it, even if your OS has been installed successfully. (Same as a physical PC would do.) You can change the boot order of the guest to go to the "hard drive" first, or remove the live-CD from the virtual CD drive before rebooting.

Perryg wrote:I am still not sure what or how you are doing all of this from what you posted, but if you do not actual install the guest it will never be saved after a reboot. As for a tutorial they are none specific to any version of VirtualBox. The install is exactly the same.

It would appear I do not know how to actually install the LiveCD as a guest in to my VirtualBox. I did not see anything that jumped out at me to "Install" my image. I thought pulling the iso image in to the VirtualBox was installing but I am wrong. Maybe I did the "New" portion wrong. I chose to "Create Virtual Hard Disk" and then chose VDI as articles I was reading sounded like this was good as it would only use up the amount of space actually used.

I was just looking and I see I have a .vdi file that has been saving to my default windows users folder "c:\Users\<userid>\VirtualBox VMs\centos7sys2\centos7sys2.vdi". Should I be booting up from this file? I am not sure how to switch it to pickup this file if this is the one I am supposed to be using to start with.

When you create a new guest the setup wizard will create the necessary files. You then boot the live cd and somewhere it allows you to actually install to the virtual hard drive. Normally it is at boot, or once booted you will see an install icon. If you do not actually install then nothing will be saved once rebooted.

You should investigate how to install the live cd from the actual source since this is outside the scope here.

Perryg wrote:When you create a new guest the setup wizard will create the necessary files. You then boot the live cd and somewhere it allows you to actually install to the virtual hard drive. Normally it is at boot, or once booted you will see an install icon. If you do not actually install then nothing will be saved once rebooted.

You should investigate how to install the live cd from the actual source since this is outside the scope here.

Thank you for all the help. I hate being a newbie. You have given me some key words to search for. Thank you and I will look on how to actually install. This looks like what I am missing.

Have a nice day.